A Professor of Design History, Jeremy Aynsley researches in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century design in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on design in modern Germany.

Professor Jeremy Aynsley’s research interests concern late-nineteenth and twentieth-century design in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on design in modern Germany. He is especially interested in the phenomenon of the migration of Modernism, avant-garde and commercial visual languages in graphic design, as well as the education and professionalisation of the designer. A further research specialism is in the history of the domestic interior and its representation through publication and exhibition.

Jeremy Aynsley writes and lectures on twentieth-century design and culture. Publications include Graphic Design in Germany, 1890-1945 (2000) and Designing Modern Germany (2008). He has also contributed to several exhibitions. In 2017, he was guest curator of Julius Klinger: posters for a modern age at the Wolfsonian, Florida International University that travelled to The Poster House, New York in 2020. Aynsley has co-authored and co-edited many academic anthologies and peer-reviewed issues of journals.

He was curator of Signs of Art and Commerce: German graphic design 1890–1945 in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1997 and co-curator with Marianne Lamonaca of Print, Power and Persuasion: Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945 at the Wolfsonian, Florida International University in 2001. In 2009-11, he contributed to the exhibition and publication California Design, 1930–1965: ‘Living in a Modern Way’, a project led by Wendy Kaplan of the Department of Design and Decorative Arts at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has been Visiting Professor at Drexel University, Philadelphia and The New School - Cooper Hewitt - Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

Before taking up the appointment at the University of Brighton in 2014, Jeremy Aynsley was Professor of History of Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA), where he was also Director of Research since 2009. He was responsible for the College’s strategic development of research including the leading the submission to the Research Excellence Framework 2014.

Jeremy Aynsley has been member of a number of external advisory boards including the AHRC Peer Review College (2005-2013). Recipient of several major research grant awards, he was Director of the AHRC Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (RCA, V&A Museum and Royal Holloway University of London) from 2001 to 2006 and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded research project The Viennese Café and fin-de-siècle culture from 2006 to 2009 (RCA, and Birkbeck University of London). Jeremy Aynsley has overseen the successful completion of twenty-one PhD and four MPhil studentships. 

Professor Aynsley is a graduate of the University of Sussex (BA, MA) and the Royal College of Art (PhD). 

Postgraduate research supervision

Jeremy welcomes approaches for supervision towards a research degree. His interests span Design History, Modernism and Design, Graphic Design, German Design and Transnational design histories. His expertise is particularly relevant in the following university PhD programme application areas: Architecture and Design and History of Art and Design.

Current supervision:

Alex Todd, The Violence of Vision: Wild Plakken and the Crisis of Dutch Political Identity, 1977–1996, supervised with Dr Harriet Atkinson TECHNE studentship (2020-)

PhD supervisory completions:

University of Brighton

Caroline Hamilton, Les Ballets 1933: collecting, exhibiting and performing the avant-garde, supervised with Dr Annebella Pollen TECHNE CDP award with Brighton Museums and Gallery (2018-2022)

Dora Souza-Dias, Representing the Graphic Design Profession on the world stage: a history of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations, 1963-2013 [University of Brighton Studentship] Supervised with Professor Catherine Moriarty and Dr Megha Rajguru  (2015-2019)

Tania Messell, Promoting industrial design on the world stage:the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, 1957-1980 [University of Brighton Studentship] supervised with Dr Lesley Whitworth (2014-2018)

Michelle Henning, Re-animating modernism: Picture Language, Museum Display and Visual Reproduction, PhD by publication (2014-2015)

Hilary French, Adaptable Housing: Accommodating Change, PhD by publication (2015-2016)

Jane Barnwell, Production Design for Film, PhD by publication, (2017-18)

Royal College of Art

2018 Mary Ann Bolger, Designing Modern Ireland: the role of graphic design in the construction of modern Ireland at home and abroad

2014 Jessica Jenkins, The mural and visual communication in urban spaces in Communist East Germany, 1945–89 

2014 Alice Twemlow, The Politics of Design Criticism since the 1950s

2012 Marina Emmanouil, Graphic Design in Greece since 1945

2011 Susie McKellar, Rational Consumption and Design 1927-1957

2010 Diane Silverthorne, Alfred Roller: Spaces of Art in Vienna 1890s-1920s

2009 Miya Itabashi, Japonisme: the representation of Japanese art in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain

2007 Lisa Godson, The Material Culture of Public Events in the Irish Free State, 1922-1949

2006 Harriet Atkinson, Spontaneous expressions of citizenship: Festival of Britain in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, 1951  

2005 Victoria Kelley, Soap and Water – cleanliness, class and gender, 1870 – 1917

2004 Trevor Keeble, The Domestic Moment: Design, Taste and Identity in the late Victorian Interior

2002 Viviana Narotzky, An Acquired Taste: the consumption of modern design in Barcelona, 1975-1995

2002 Deborah Landis, Scene and not heard, Hollywood Costume Design

2001 Yasuko Suga Ida, Representation of the State through Design in interwar Britain

2001 Diane Bisson, Museums in Transition: past and present interpretations of the concept of design

2000 Nicolas Maffei, Norman Bel Geddes: designer of the future

MPhil supervisory completions:

Royal College of Art

Rick Poynor, Modernism and Eclecticism in Typographica, 1949-1967 (1998)

Jane Audas, Reflections of Modernity: shop display, 1930-1940 (2001)

Line Pederson, The Design of Art Nouveau Jewellery in Denmark (2001)

Ana Fereira de Rocha National Identity, Cultural Heritage, Cultural Industry and Architectural Production after the Second World War – Museums of Modern and Contemporary Arts and Design in Rio de Janeiro, Paris and London (2008)

I have delivered modules and individual lectures on the BA (Hons) History of Art and Design and MA in History of Design and Material Culture with a particular emphasis on histories of interior and graphic design. I also supervise MA dissertations in these areas.